"Eating a small piece of soap at stated intervals is recommended by a Berlin physician as a better remedy for dyspepsia and sour stomach than soda, magnesia or lime water."
~From The Standard (Clarksville, Tex.), December 19, 1884
"About a year ago one of the greatest sensation that ever stirred Wisconsin was created by the announcement that two women were living together as man and wife at Waupon. The fact that the husband in the case was a woman was developed in a way that was in keeping with the general outline of this whole story. A Mrs. J.L. Hudson, living in the southern part of the State, had run away from her husband and family. The husband spent many months in looking for the runaway, but could not find the slightest clew. Accidentally, however, he found Mrs. Hudson masquerading as a man and actually married to a beautiful young girl at Waupun. A tremendous explosion followed. The woman insisted that she was a man, and with the young bride left the town. Newspaper men followed the trail of the pair and found them. The identity of the 'husband' was proved beyond a doubt, but with an inexplicable fascination the bride insisted on remaining with her companion, and asserted that her companion was a man. Legal proceedings on the part of the bride's family were threatened, and the 'husband' disappeared for a time. Long accounts of the bride's grief filled the papers of the State, but after a time the matter disappeared out of public sight and mind. The mystery of the affair was never cleared, and there were a few who still believed that the 'husband' was a man. It is stated that Mrs. Hudson afterwards returned to her husband and children. The strangely infatuated Waupun girl could never be persuaded to assist in clearing the mystery. Last fall Gertie Fuller became a mother and asserted that Dubois was the child's father.* The case has never been explained. The last chapter was enacted yesterday, at Shocton, where Gertie Fuller-Dubois was married to a man named Lehman."
~From Arizona silver belt. (Globe City, Pinal County, Ariz.), 11 Oct. 1884. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
*To clarify, "Dubois" refers to "Frank Dubois," the name Mrs. Hudson was going by, and Gertie Fuller was "the strangely infatuated Waupun girl" married to Hudson/Dubois.
"A Handsome Wife Imprisoned for Thirty Years by her Jealous Husband
The death of Nelson Hinman, the owner of a farm in Naugatuck Valley, Ct., two weeks since, disclosed the fact that for thirty years he had kept his wife confined in an upper apartment with grated windows. She has been partially insane, but the deceased is now charged with causing her mind to give way by an exhibition of his jealousy when she was near her confinement with her first child. Before her marriage she was a woman of refinement and education, and quite a belle. Her reputation had always been of the purest and best, but when her husband, in a moment of anger, allowed his jealousy to get the better of his reason and upbraided her, it shocked the poor woman so that ever after her mind was somewhat unsettled, her reason partially dethroned. Since Hinman's death Mrs. Hinman has been out of her room on several occasions. The first was just before the funeral services of her husband were held. Then coming out of her room she looked over the banisters of the stairs down into the hall where the cold stern features of her tyrannical husband looked up from his coffin. A cynical smile--almost a look of exultation--swept over the haggard features of the once beautiful belle of Birmingham, and then without a word she returned to her room and in silence looked for hours through the grated window at the long stretch of snow and ice fringing the rushing Housatonic. She seemed content--for the first time in three decades--quiet at peace with herself. There is little hope that the wretched wife, now an old woman of over sixty-five years, can ever be restored to reason, and in all probability, despite treatment which is promised, she will die as she has lived--a prisoner in her own room."
~From Fort Worth Daily Gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.), March 18, 1884
Well. That's depressing.
"An extraordinary ride undertaken by a young woman named Margaret Brice McNamara for revenge, is reported from Australia. The young woman considered that she had received some injury at the hands of a police trooper named Power, and resolved to pursue him in order to seek revenge. She disguised herself as a bushman, and obtained a pack horse. She carried a loaded revolver with her and had traveled 4700 miles on horseback when she was arrested at a place called Quorn before she had had an opportunity to accomplish her purpose."
~From The Daily Cosmopolitan (Brownsville, Tex.), December 16, 1884
